Oil consumption has fallen, demand from U.S. motorists for gasoline is flat at best and refiners that turn crude into fuel are operating well below capacity. Yet oil prices keep marching toward $90 a barrel, pushing gasoline toward $3 a gallon in many markets, and prompting American drivers to ask, “What gives?”Blame it on the same folks who brought you $140 oil and $4 gasoline in 2008: Wall Street speculators.

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“The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is weighing a proposal to put global limits on how many oil contracts any one market player can buy or sell, and legislation to revamp financial regulation that’s expected to pass Congress this year could force greater disclosure by oil traders to regulators.”

Maybe, but after seeing how well the new legislation “regulating” healthcare worked out, I’m not holding my breath. Unregulated capitilism scares me as much as Obama’s mythical socialism scares the tea partiers.

That McClatchy story is dated April 1st. I saw it yesterday in my paper. It kind of reminds me of the lead up to the war in Iraq. McClatchy, then Knight Ridder, was reporting, ” What WMDs?” None of the smaller papers wanted to carry their version. Judith Miller’s version sold more papers. As for Wall Street driving up oil prices, it just gets swept under the rug, filled under, “we don’t need to know.”